Life Cycles - Lesson One completed, Next!!

So "Super Caterpillar" turned out to be a bit of a surprise. Silly mom never considered all the possibilities of what might grow out of a caterpillar. LOL

Anyway. It lived happily in its little box for a while, munching away on grass and leaves fetched almost daily. Then it got slower and quieter, until finally it just kind of stopped. A day or so later, I realized that it hadn't just stopped, but had formed into a furry little blob on the underside of a stick. Hmm. Didn't look much like a cocoon, but whatever. Inside of this little bunch of fur, we could clearly see a little dark casing, and some leftover body parts (ew).

So we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

I started to wonder if maybe this was less of a cocoon than a coffin. This was not helped when I went online and looked up caterpillars and cocoons, and discovered that butterfly cocoons are not furry. Hmm.

A little more research and I realized that our fuzzy friend was, in fact, a MOTH caterpillar. Okay, well... okay. So much for dreams of a beautiful butterfly. I figured it would hatch out into one of those brown furry things that flutter around the windows at night. The thing was, I also read that moths can take MONTHS to come out of their pupa. Not so good. So I started making plans to move "Super Cocoon" into the barn for the duration.

Then, a few days ago, we came downstairs and Cara says, "Look, Mommy! It turned into a butterfly!!" I was about to say, "No, honey, it didn't yet," but remembered that she is actually right more often than we expect, so I took a look.

Sure enough! A surprisingly pretty moth was there inside the box, having wiggled its way out of its pupa (leaving the furry blob intact, quite a feat!). It's black with some bright blue, and a vivid orange here and there. I've never seen one like that before.

So we moved it outside, took off the lid and left it to go and find its friends. It took a day and a half before it worked up the energy to leave, but it did.


And now it's on to the next lesson in life cycles. Tadpoles. :) Two little swimmers have taken up residence on the dining room table next to our Betta. I thought it best NOT to take Cara's suggestion and put them in the tank WITH the Betta. LOL